Upcoming Events
Past Events
追尋失去的榮譽: 尋找趙振英少校、尋找馬廷誨老師
利榮達演講廳 (LT-D)
1945年9月9日，中國戰區受降儀式在南京舉行，年輕的新六軍少校趙振英在場負責警戒。現場紀錄影像隨後塵封於美國國家檔案館，而趙振英歷盡坎坷，默默無聞地生活在盧溝橋畔。數十年後，抗日將領後代、建築師晏歡受一個紀錄片鏡頭的啓發，從援華美軍家中珍藏的一幅合影和一個小紅日記本開始，追尋數年，終於找到趙振英，與專業團隊合作創作出紀錄片《發現少校》。沉寂半個世紀的趙振英成爲兩岸知名的抗戰老兵，追回失去的榮譽。 READ MORE...
“Jesus God, it’s Anna May Wong!”: Labor in the Margins
to
Zoom
Anna May Wong (1905-1961), the first famous yet marginalized early 20th-c. Chinese American screen-stage-TV performer, is finally getting overdue nationwide recognition in the US, with her image ingrained and memorialized in the newly minted quarter coin issued in 2022 as part of the American Women Quarters Program. Yet, how to grapple with her legacy remains a thorny question. The difficulty has to do with two factors. One: most of her roles were inglorious race-gender stereotypes churned out by the exclusionary and prejudiced Hollywood “dream factory.” Two: not quite a star, Wong spent the majority of her life hustling and playing minor roles, supporting the white female star. Despite her newly minted nationwide recognition, her life-career could hardly be upcycled into a testimony of the “American dream.” So, what exactly is Wong’s legacy, aside from her iconic significance as the first famous Chinese American performer? My presentation takes seriously the fact that the bulk of her career was built upon playing small roles in films and TV shows. Departing from star studies that spotlights the star glamour and the star’s center position on the screen, I refocus on Wong’s leverage of the margins and the background of screen. Shining light on her flitting yet remarkable appearances as a supporting performer, I argue that her unglamorous and belabored performances not only call attention to entertainment industry’s racializing and hierarchizing apparatus, but also reveal how the center stage is both constructed and deconstructed by the peripheries she occupies. In other words, far from a mere victim of the exclusionary entertainment industry, Wong, along with other racialized performers, worked from the margins to challenge white stardom and white heteropatriarchy. READ MORE...